Saturday, the National Independent Soccer Association (NISA) held what the League described as a “progress update” on EDI (Equality, Diversity, Inclusion) provisions that were put in place last fall coming off a 2020 summer that saw racial tensions heightened in the United States.
According to a Protagonist Soccer affiliated Twitter account, all but one team attended the progress update with the tweet stating that the person who passed along the info to them wouldn’t name the unidentified team but that “we could probably guess” presumably who that team was.
Later on Sunday, the Northern Guard sent out a tweet saying that they have confirmed that the team who didn’t attend was the Michigan Stars FC who is one of the current participants in the NISA Legends Cup in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
NISA released a statement via Protagonist Soccer saying, “we are a league of independent clubs. Every player and club have the option to attend/participate. We can’t and won’t speak for those who didn’t attend, and we won’t shame them, either. We are grateful for the participation we had…and that more players volunteered to participate on our equity council.”
Earlier this month, NISA announced their “Equality Committee” which NISA Commissioner John Prutch stated was “to bring equal vocal and visual representation to people of color and women in our soccer ecosystem.”
According to the announcement, every single active club had at least one representative for the committee with the exception of three, San Diego 1904 FC, New Amsterdam FC, and the Michigan Stars FC.
Although no one is talking about 1904 or NAFC this Sunday in regard to Saturday’s NISA EDI event, in some sense since 1904 were a club that some believed wouldn’t be ready to compete this spring, the accusations against the Michigan Stars FC would serve as that educated “guess” unbeknownst to what the NGS later tweeted. Simply put, that MAGA rally the Michigan Stars hosted at their facility in Washington, Township, Michigan in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic wouldn’t help any case of denial when it comes to the EDI event this past Saturday.
It’s not enough to be non-racist, you have to actually be anti-racist
Given NISA’s statement regarding non-participation in an EDI event, you can’t help but question the League’s genuine commitment to the cause of being an actual anti-racist organization. As racism and bigotry become an ever-growing problem in the United States while black and brown people are continually targeted and murdered by police, it’s been abundantly clear that moral theatrics have done absolutely nothing to curtail the growing threat of violence towards marginalized communities.
In essence, it’s not enough to be non-racist, you actually have to be anti-racist.
In NISA’s case the “independent” approach to optional participation in these “equality committees” scream moral theatrics and a milquetoast non-racist stance when we again need sports leagues, like NISA to be genuinely anti-racist. We’ve highlighted the remarkable ability before that sport has to influence social change and this is no different.
Not to mention, a do nothing approach to teams who fail to participate in any kind of EDI awareness only emboldens them to continue to promote their own toxic culture. Likewise, it could very well give the impression to teams who do participate that EDI is nothing but a backseat issue and if they want to brush it aside themselves until the next optional meeting, they’re perfectly free to do so.